Verity Nunan, Community Tent Building Project, 2022-ongoing. Courtesy the artist and Broken Hill Art Exchange. Photo: Em Jensen

still waters run deep

curated by Hester Lyon

Barbara Quayle, Blake Griffiths, Dan Schulz, Tannya Quayle and Verity Nunan

Gallery 1

room sheet

still waters run deep brings together the work of five artists who live or have lived on Wilyakali and Barkindji/Barkandji Country in Far West NSW: Barbara Quayle, Blake Griffiths, Dan Schulz, Tannya Quayle, and Verity Nunan.

This is an exhibition about place. This place is our home, and through their practice, each artist reckons with their relationship to it. For Barb and Tannya, it is their ancestral homeland. For Blake, Dan and Verity, it is a place they have connected to and care for deeply.

The communities of Broken Hill and Menindee are rich in contradictions. It is a place of community and Country, where the land and waterways sustain life in this arid and remote region. Yet, communities are confronted by the harsh realities of climate catastrophe and cultural violence, a direct consequence of ongoing colonisation, environmental mismanagement and power struggles.

In preparation for this exhibition, we gathered on Barkindji/Barkandji Country in August 2024, among the red sand hills and freshwater lakes of Kinchega National Park, just outside the town of Menindee on the Baaka (Darling River). This gathering was central to the development of the artists' work, fostering stronger relationships among the artists—some who are family and longtime collaborators and others who had known of each other but had never spent time together. We came together to share, cook, listen, walk, make and talk, deepening our connection to the place we call home.

The exhibition creates a space that both generates and observes connection between artists that have a sustained engagement with the social, cultural, environmental and political fabric of Broken Hill and Menindee. Each artist is positioned within a specific site or context from which they encounter the politics of the everyday: the town square; the shores of the Menindee Lakes; the banks of the Baaka; the regional gallery; the regeneration zone around Broken Hill; the slag heap; the creek bed. It is from these contexts that these artists use print making, installation, sculpture, textiles and video to translate and trace the distinctive shape and internal tensions of Far West NSW.

This project has been made possible by the support and mentorship of Cementa Inc. Proudly funded by the NSW Government through Create NSW.